A plane passes over residential high-rises on Jan 9, 2025, behind a row of a mysterious bamboo fence spanning 30km in the coastal waters of Tangerang, Banten. - Antara
JAKARTA: Authorities say they are investigating who might be behind a mysterious bamboo fence erected in coastal waters off Tangerang, Banten, though critics suspect the barrier was erected as markers for a reclamation project to which the government has turned a blind eye.
No individual or entity has claimed responsibility for the fence, which spans 30km of Tangerang’s 51km coastline along the Java Sea and was reportedly installed sometime last year.
It gained widespread public attention only recently after pictures and videos of it went viral on social media, catching the eye of President Prabowo Subianto on Thursday (Jan 9).
This prompted the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry to seal off the “illegal” structure, although authorities fell short of dismantling it entirely.
Maritime affairs minister Sakti Wahyu Trenggono said the ministry’s operating procedures prevented authorities from dismantling the structure without first confirming who built and financed it.
“But when we have confirmed [who committed] the violation, we will hand down an administrative sanction and ask them to dismantle it,” Wahyu said in a video statement posted on the ministry’s official Instagram account (@kkpgoid) on Friday.
The ministry’s marine and fishery resources management director general, Pung Nugroho Saksono, said in a press release on Jan 9 that a joint investigation last September by the Indonesian Marine Police and the Banten Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Agency confirmed that the fence was illegal, because it did not have the marine spatial utilisation activity (KKPRL) licence.
According to a 2022 government regulation in lieu of law on job creation, the KKPRL is a basic requirement for obtaining a maritime business permit.
The investigation also raised concerns that the fence, which stands some 700m from the shoreline in zones designated for fisheries and energy management, could destroy the area’s marine biodiversity.
However, it failed to uncover the individual or group that had constructed the fence. As the government began ramping up its investigation into the Tangerang fence, social media was abuzz with another offshore fence spanning 8km along the northern coast of Bekasi, West Java, the origins of which remained "a mystery", Kompas.com reported.
Some have speculated that the culprit behind the Tangerang fence is the Agung Sedayu Group, the private property conglomerate that is developing the 1,800-hectare Pantai Indah Kapuk (PIK) 2 real estate megaproject in the region.
But PIK 2 spokesperson Toni denied any involvement with the mysterious structure.
“[The fence] has nothing to do with us,” Toni said on Sunday, as quoted by Antara, adding that the group’s legal team would soon take action against such speculation.
Meanwhile, a group called Jaringan Rakyat Pantura (North Coast People’s Network) recently claimed credit for the fence in Tangerang, saying local communities had funded and erected it to prevent further coastal erosion.
"Local residents know that [coastal] abrasion in Tangerang regency has been going on for generations,” network spokesperson Shandi Martha Praja said on Monday, as quoted by kompas.com.
“[That’s why the fence] was built around four to five months ago,” he said. Coastal communities in the area would not resist any action by the government to forcibly remove the fence but would lament the move, Shandi said, as the structure had come to support local fishers in cultivating shrimp and harvesting mussels.
Environmentalists, however, said it did not make sense for fishermen to voluntarily block their access to the sea, and that the fence’s sheer scale meant there was no way that local communities had funded and built it without the government noticing.
“I think it’s impossible for authorities to not know who is behind the sea fence. If anything, I suspect that some officials are backing it,” Zenzi Suhadi of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) said on Tuesday.
He also suggested the fences were likely connected to ongoing land reclamation projects in and around Greater Jakarta, marking the site for the development of new islets.
“If the government does nothing about it, those fences will be turned into new islands. This is a serious issue and could set a bad precedent of [enabling] people to literally change how Indonesia looks on a map,” said Zenzi.
He therefore called on the government to immediately dismantle the structures instead of just sealing them, and for law enforcement to open a full-blown investigation that included questioning high-ranking officials and ministers that might benefit from their construction. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
